


When They Touched Me I Died

by babykid528



Category: Actor RPF, Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner, Star Trek RPF
Genre: Crossover, M/M, Masturbation, Other, Present Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:47:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykid528/pseuds/babykid528
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>Zach, despite what everyone seems to think of him, is not a classic lit dork.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	When They Touched Me I Died

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Written for the very dear Ewinfic for my "drabble" meme. Her prompt was simply- Zach/Quentin, so I ran with it. ;-)
> 
> Special thanks to Karaokegal for being the best beta a girl could ask for. &lt;3
> 
> **Disclaimer:** Lies, lies, and more lies. Zach belongs to himself. The title, quote, and Quentin all belong to the estate of Mr. William Faulkner.

  
Zach, despite what everyone seems to think of him, is not a classic lit dork. No, that's definitely Chris' thing. And yet, for some reason, everyone's constantly shocked to see Zach perusing his iPhone while Chris sits by inhaling nearly disintegrated copies of _Metamorphosis_ and _Odysseus_.

It's not that Zach doesn't like to read. He does. He'd have to. With a vocabulary as advanced as his, he'd have to at least read the dictionary. And Zach doesn't read the dictionary. He reads books, but he tends to stick with the newest, freshest authors. People no one's ever heard of before.

If people thought about it long enough, they'd realize this makes complete sense. Zach's reading habits fit him to a "T."

All except one, that is.

When Zach is asked about his favorite author, he answers with a chuckle and some big name.

The name always changes.

Sometimes it's an up-and-coming hero of contemporary lit (no one else was reading Ian McEwan years before _Atonement_ was made into a movie, he claims). Other times it's a big name author of cultural significance (Tolstoy, anyone? How about Melville?).

The thing is, none of the names he gives are true. Sure, he likes them well enough, even Tolstoy, but Tolstoy could never be Zach's favorite.

***

The entire Trek cast is out at a club in L.A. at the close of the press tour. It's the last time for a long while that they're all going to be in one place and everyone is feeling nostalgic.

Zoe quickly sweeps Zach onto the dance floor. Classically trained dancers are, strangely enough, limelight stealers and Zach is more than happy to help Zoe steal the show.

After a few songs, Zoe excuses herself so that she can go call Keith quickly and Zach makes his way over to the table where the men from the cast are all gathered in seemingly deep conversation.

"Listen," he hears Chris lecturing Anton, "I don't care how 'awesome' you think Dostoyevsky is, my little Zaichik* —"

"Uh oh, he's throwing that one Russian word he knows out there," Karl stage whispers to Bruce. "He clearly means business."

Chris either doesn't hear Karl or chooses to ignore him as he continues his argument.

"Nothing will ever compare to the way Faulkner explores familial relationships. I'm sorry, but it's true. Occasionally, Americans get it right."

Anton scoffs while John and Karl start up a chorus of "ooooooooooo's."

Zach stops dead in his tracks.

"You're wrong, mon ami," Anton shakes his head.

"Now _he's_ speaking French?" Simon exclaims, "I need more beer if they're gonna keep this up."

Zach remains staring at them, hardly breathing, and he only snaps out of his statue routine when Zoe comes gliding up beside him.

"You wanna come get a drink with me?" she asks him, hand gently squeezing his forearm.

He nods before the others can turn to question how long he was standing there without saying anything and she whisks him away again, toward the bar this time.

"I'm sticking with wine spritzers tonight," she tells him while waving the bartender over, "Keith's waiting up for me." She winks with her last remark.

He smiles more out of politeness than actual amusement. Zach suddenly feels like he's miles away from this loud and flashy club.

When the bartender arrives, Zoe places her order and turns to Zach once again, asking, "Do you want a Rum and Coke?"

He thinks for a moment before shaking his head, turning down his usual order.

"No," he turns toward the bartender, seeing him for the first time, "I'll have two fingers of Jack on the rocks."

Zoe appraises him for a moment.

"That's certainly a change."

Her words are carefully chosen, Zach can feel it in the way her lips seem to form each syllable more deliberately than usual.

He manages a shrug.

"I'm in a whiskey kind of mood," he answers, throwing in a grin for good measure.

She seems assuaged by his explanation, or at least his acting abilities. When their drinks are delivered, her phone begins vibrating and she excuses herself to answer it, leaving Zach at the bar with his glass. He heads back over to the table where the guys are sitting, if only because he doesn't want them to come looking for him and he knows they would if he didn't return to them. At least, Chris would.

So, he takes the seat beside Chris and mirrors the gentle smile Chris throws him as he waits for everyone to get sucked into conversation once again. Only when they're distracted does he let himself stare off into the amber liquid inside his tumbler.

***

Zach arrives home that night for the first time in weeks and he's thankful, surprisingly so, that Harold and Noah are still staying with Joe one more night and he doesn't have to attend to their needs even if it has literally been weeks since he's last seen them and he's missed them like crazy. No, Zach is alone in his home and he's teetering on his feet as he fights to kick off his shoes and head down the hall in the dark silence to his neglected bedroom and his cold sheets. He held onto that whiskey he ordered not drinking it just staring into it until long after the ice had melted and everyone was preparing to call it a night and then with a soft chuckle under his breath he downed the tumbler's contents in one gulp feeling a warm tingle pervade his muscles from his stomach on outward to his toes, his fingers, his face, his cock. He was half-hard before they even left the bar struggling to hide the evidence of his deviance as he slid into the passenger seat of Chris' car but it remained insistent the entire way home. Now, as he falls stomach down onto the bed and his half-erect cock is trapped between the weight of his body and the pillow-top mattress Zach lets out a soft moan into the shadows as a surge of arousal floods through his body following the same outward path as the tingling alcohol only this time originating further south.

If he stretches just a little Zach can reach the top drawer of his bedside table, pull it open, and grasp the fraying cover of the literally disintegrating book he keeps hidden there beneath his lube and condoms and other sex paraphernalia. His fingers tingle with the memory of the feel of worn-thin pages falling out in halves and pieces beneath his careful perusal (he's read the book so many times this is actually his fifth copy of it and he's been meaning to pick up copy number six for a few months now) he can't stifle a louder moan as the thoughts flash through his mind. He arches his back a little so he can press his cock further into the mattress releasing a whine from deep in his throat and he can smell the whiskey on his own breath and taste it on his tongue and for a few moments he feels as if he's drowning in it. He rolls onto his back and begins unbuttoning his jeans shimmying them down to his knees while imagining a heavy mahogany desk and a typewriter strewn with papers and a lone sweating tumbler of strong Southern whiskey shimmering in the low light of the desk lamp casting a flickering ghostly amber glow across everything in the otherwise dark room: it's what Zach believes must have been Faulkner's choice work environment, choice work tools, as he created the most tragically beautiful family of characters— the most tragically beautiful boy Zach has ever read about. As he reaches into his briefs fingers seeking his swollen erection straining against the rough cotton his hand feels foreign not his touch but the caress of a lost and lonely young man struggling to understand himself far away from home in the ancient illustrious halls of a university with a reputation the floundering boy couldn't have lived up to even if he'd wanted to.

_Let Jason have it. Give Jason a year at Harvard._

Zach gasps as the pleading desperate thought echoes in a strange voice within his skull causing his hips to jerk and his fist to tighten drawing a painful shudder out of his core. Zach wants to quicken the pace, end this so he can sleep and move on to tomorrow, but he's not in control never has been where Quentin is concerned it doesn't matter that the boy's nothing but a few thousand words on a handful of pages in a pair of books. Zach's fist twists slowly as he begins stroking himself as Quentin settles more solidly into Zach's mind and Zach sputters for breath as he tries to laugh at the absurdity of the fictional boy who could never quite take action taking control of him at his most vulnerable (if Quentin were real and here now he wouldn't have the slightest idea of what to do with this kind of power but he's not there and Zach needs this, to be at this young man's mercy). Zach is hyper-aware of just how rough his fingers feel as they burn streaks along his buzzing nerve-endings all the way up to the swelling cock head dripping with the build-up of his desires and he moans wantonly fisting the stomach of his t-shirt in his free hand as he writhes on the bed silently begging the dark room for more while furiously fucking his fist.

Zach always feels as if he's on the edge of a steep cavern waiting to fall at this point in the fantasy: not just into ecstasy but back into a world where Quentin is just some character who offs himself before rising to his full potential; where Quentin is just another name in another American novel only this name Zach publicly pretends he doesn't know even when he privately whimpers it at his ceiling as a broken tearless sob while he comes in thick trembling strips across his hand and stomach at least once a week. Tonight as he topples over the edge he realizes not for the first time that the cavern isn't a cavern at all but an all too familiar New England bridge inlaid with a plaque remembering the fallen boy who Zach eagerly follows into the beckoning waters happily drowning over and over again in the spasms of bitter-sweet euphoria all for the sake of fleetingly feeling him inside his head and beside him all at once. In the morning Zach will awaken stomach covered in his own release and red with embarrassment and after he showers all evidence to the contrary away he'll act as if nothing happened and deny all knowledge of Quentin's existence like Peter denied Christ. He will however be sure to remember to add to his list of shopping and groceries a hastily scribbled title to a novel no one knows he's ever read.

  
_"...his very body was an empty hall echoing with sonorous defeated names; he was not a being, an entity, he was a commonwealth. He was a barracks filled with stubborn, back-looking ghosts." _ \--Absalom, Absalom!

  
*Russian term of endearment meaning "bunny"


End file.
